Being able to evolve and progress in business and life means pacing ourselves to engage our thinking in activities that will help us to…

– achieve something we haven’t done before;

– do something better than we did it last time;

– find a more effective way of doing something that we’re used to doing routinely.

This is proactive thinking. It’s about taking time to strategize where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. I firmly believe that business is a marathon, not a sprint. If you try to take speedy shortcuts and react quickly to events, you won’t necessarily reach your destination any quicker. You might even end up heading the wrong way and have to promptly change course. And none of us like to be in that situation!

So, why do so many of us get caught up in this kind of reactive thinking?

…Because it’s easy to think that being busy means being productive – that if we deal with tasks as soon as they arise, we’re making progress. But in rushing to get through these tasks, we’re not giving them the attention and depth of thought they might need. This can be lethal to our creativity. By thinking proactively, we come to understand that innovative success is a force to be purposefully cultivated and deployed. We learn to push the boundaries with careful planning and strategizing, rather than using the same old tried-and-tested formulas.

Typically to our work environments in South East Asia and especially to younger executives, it is often that we get too caught up with the existing pool of work without taking account into the future roadmap.

When tight and near impossible deadlines are imminent, it is hard to be creative nor flexible. New ideas will look like a chore – desiring little motivation and purpose. Brickwalls are now hard to climb over. You are easily stressed.

Let’s buy, free – the invisible price-tag.

There are promotions everywhere, and businesses affix “FREE” labels in every product they can find in an attempt to lure more consumers. I think that there’s nothing wrong with that, as the main idea for the business is to generate profit & achieve their targets.
The problem lies with the consumers.

Businesses are run by people. Since we are all consumers (Yes, don’t you buy groceries or anything?) – Businesses are simply consumers too.

As humans, we tend to be more attracted to freebies and giveaways. Some of us are impulse buyers, but I guess we have to look through the thin line of feasibility. Like what marketers always say, we don’t create the product. Rather, we create the demand – the need of the item through multiple promotional & sales channels.

Logically, the item (free or not) is factored into the pricing of the product.

There’s 3 types of free
1) FREE for life, – Probably, something physical. (You’ve already paid for it)
2) FREE TRIAL – you’re physically given credits, emotionally, you’re locked in to the service / product. (You’re going to pay for it soon, unless your heart tells you otherwise. But due to the nature of how we are being brought up – It’s not that hard getting the consumer to pay after the trial.)
3) Freemium – The current trend of monetization, the company will offer you it’s barely sufficient plan – hoping that you will upgrade to the paid tier. I would say, this is really a large step for the consumer, as you could test it’s usefulness through time.

So here are some questions to ask, before buying items with FREE labeled on it.

BEFORE YOU ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS – YOU NEED TO HAVE SELF REASONING SKILLS.
Which I believe it’s in all of our blood, so let’s begin!

Scenario: You go to a supermarket / store, and see an item you really want.. You really want to buy it, but you are on a tight budget. So here are some questions..

1) Do I need this product?

1a) No, drop it.
1b) Yes, why?
(Do the answer come straight to your head? Or are you trying to come out with a use for that? If your answer is the latter, refer to 1a)

2) Frequency – How many times would I use it anyway?

2a) Really often. (Move to Question 3)
2b) I’m not too sure, rarely, almost never? Or still thinking how to answer this question? Refer to 1a. Or you could simply rent or borrow it from someone.

3) Alternatives

3a) Have I tried looking for the product on another platform? Internet? or other stores down the road?
There’s so many group-buying (Groupon), Auction Sites (eBay / Qoo10), Forums & e-Retailers.
On top of that, there are many eCoupons & voucher codes available on the internet. (You can input those before you checkout)
3b) Is there another product that’s equally competitive by another manufacturer? The bang for the buck – Remember, it’s not always the cheaper the better, neither, the other way round.
Also, check the specifications (Such as the volume, quality, etc), not just the pricing.
3c) Are there any problems with the particular model or product you crave? Look it up on Amazon.com, popular forums, hit the Google search for reviews. *Bonus if you have a data plan on the go*
3d) Timing & Seasons – A PC show next month? Summer sales a few weeks down the road? New model in the upcoming weeks? Can I wait?
If you did not bother to try out any of the options above, refer to 1a.

4) The Free Factor

After the long decision process, that’s where you figure out whether the ‘Free’ price tag is worth abiding by.
Think ‘free’, the new ‘paid’.
4a) Is it worth buying the item with the ‘free’ item?
4b) If you do not need the ‘free’ item, what are you going to do with it? Where is it’s new home?

5) Shelf Life & Future Provisions

I guess it’s entirely logical if I’ve to write about the practically of the future and the afterlife of the item. (Before you even buy it, yes, similar to Birth Planning)
5a) Do you have space to house the item? (Logistics)
5b) Is there any consequences after buying the item (No $ for dinner or rent, etc)
5c) How long do you expect the product to last anyway?
That’s where you decide on the quantity to purchase.

This is a long guide, but for all the impulse buyers. Here’s a toast to you.

“Are we just doing it just for the sake of a short-term goal? Or are we just pleasing someone behind our backs?”

I believe everyone had somehow asked themselves this question before, somewhat directly or not, or during the times where you are in the middle of the crossroad.

No matter what the situation might be, this same story (from Steve Jobs) came back to me:

When Steve dropped out of college, he went for a lesson tour; sitting in and switching lessons that he had a keen interest in & one of the important lessons he sat determined the great typography in Apple Computers. Did he not drop out of school and sat for that particular lesson, Apple Computers will never look the same again.

As all of us, forward-looking people who move on the ranks of the society, I think we should some-how understand the concept of connecting the dots. Similar to the drawing game that you might have played when you are young, it is all about connecting the dots in your path:

Unlike the image on my left, if all the dots were so detailed, there’s basically an outcome that you can already foresee. I strongly believe that in many scenarios, all of us (including myself), pick up & learn new things that some of the times, we have no interest in or something that’s in no relation to our career paths.

However, sometimes, through this minor pockets of learning in everyone’s life, the invisible dots in our destiny will appear & if the lines were drawn perfectly and to scale, it will definitely give you the perfect image.

Notice that all of the dots are entirely dependent on no-one else other than you. Furthermore, all of this dots would never exist unless you went sourcing for opportunities or it literally came knocking to you (Rarely),

Here’s the punchline: Even though opportunities do exist, just like dots with labels in the picture (above), the lines are oftenly not drawn & soon enough, the labels and the dots will fade away. With another opportunity lost. It’s about how we connect the lines and find the right dots.

While I could only speak about myself, I’m still try to get my lines drawn (At best) & of course, if you got it connected, let me know!

So here’s yet another attempt of me sharing what events are on lately. Happened recently is Educamp, where people get-together to talk about various aspects of educations and learning. People get to share their cool projects, ideas and research findings. The topics are then based on participants votes.

The 4th installment of EduCamp is held at ITE College East (LT3), where there are about 40 odd people. They come from various education institutions & diverse backgrounds. Well, some educators, some doing some awesome startups and curators.

One of the hot topics that was on the board was the debate of virtual online classrooms, the likes of Khan Academy and OpenLectures. What is the future of online learning? – The face to face element is still really important, so there needs to be some kind of balance.

The next is about Flipped Learning, where the teachers move lectures out of the classroom and moves the ‘”homework” to the classroom. Students get to spend more time about problems in class with their peers and get their lectures at home (Through teacher-aided online materials, online videos and so on). Mind-opening, great potential.

There was some chatter about Flipped Presentations, where students come to school prepared for every lesson at home to talk about what they’ve learnt & they shared it with everyone else. Pretty insightful.

Some insights of the usage of education through online media; if you change the medium but not the teaching method, it won’t work. No matter its podcasting, to vodcasting or what Social Media platforms.

(Next the event got split into both rooms, for those who can fill me in for the other room, drop me a tweet (@thejeremygoh) or email me (contact on the right), you’ll really help everyone in the community, loads of karma points!)

The next presentation is a brief showcase of an iPhone app to help educators, it got developed in a few hours during a development bootcamp. It mainly is a to-do list integrated with a class register, so that would really help collecting Edusave forms easier/report book/class tests/etc. It also aims to include a private social network in it, where teachers could basically gossip about students (in a good way) & help students to improve through collaboration. Monetization through subscription & customized development. Base code will be open sourced. (Still in discussion) Thoughts?

The next presentation is where an NUS lecturer share that he took the learning out of the classroom, bringing students to the nature like Palau Ubin or Botanical Gardens, where they use their laptops to look through pinpoints done by lecturers, students would have to observe the plant, take photos of them & they would have to basically work together. A junior is attached to the senior (Junior gets to learn technical skills from Senior, Senior gets to learn project management skills) & during the process, the assignment must create some sort of fear (A police and thief concept), so that the student will be on their toes. Everyone had fun.

Startup Weekend, all about the history and the future in Startups!

The next presentation is about #edsg (Educate Singapore), where a group of people requests everyone to use that hashtag on any tweet on Twitter that has a form of educational value. A platform of people where they collaborate and learn different things from people. So if you’re on Twitter, use it, why not?

(I will fork the section out below and create a blog post dedicated about my talk soon)

Plug: I also spoke about Social Media in Education, here’s a sweet summary of points:

Use Facebook Groups for Communications

All your students are on it, you should too!

That platform could allow a collaborative discussion in seconds, its human instinct to hit the comment and like button

You get a ton of likes!

Use Tumblr as a Blogging Platform

Not that everyone in the world is using it, but it’s easy to use and manage

The design and setting it up makes sure your content comes from, among anything else.

Maths, Science, Geography? Condense all of those long texts and put it on Tumblr

Use Wikia for Community Building – This case, Wikipedia for Classrooms

Recognize: Not every student have identical learning abilities

Students to make notes for every lesson and make sure they use Wikia to contribute it online – Threaten if they don’t when possible.

Any student could edit those notes and add in theirs, making it more useful over time.

BONUS: Education is now open source, everyone could view and learn from there. Going out of schools, to help others in the world.

Integration

Your role is to find a way to integrate all of this tactics to help your learning.

Good luck & remember to report back here!

Questions?

How About Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that limits the message to 140 characters, but the platform have a higher learning curve (learning about RT, @mentions and so on) and it is to saturated with many teenagers twitters posting about them wanting to cut themselves, relationship turmoil & I love you texts. So it’s basically too ‘noisy’.

Okay: Here’s a great tip, you can hashtag your Twitter classroom topics, like get your students to hashtag your lectures and make sure that you can follow their conversation & vice versa via Twitter.

You can contribute your questions by commenting below, I will write what I think here. On top of that, I will publish a blog post about Social Media in a conducive classroom / learning environment soon.

Visited HackerSpace after that, nothing too exciting about programming, development and coding. Well, if you’re interested, there’s W3Schools, get started there.

If you visited the event & have loads of additional materials and content to provide to my blog, please kindly share them, for the love of the community. Drop a tweet or email me (details on the sidebar)